


The Legend Of The Dragoness

by Valentine20xx



Category: Tenkuu no Escaflowne | The Vision of Escaflowne
Genre: F/M, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2020-07-28 21:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20070517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentine20xx/pseuds/Valentine20xx
Summary: A little known or explored legend on Gaea speaks of the Dragoness. Given many names through history, the feminine guymelef is the personal steed of the one who is the mate of Escaflowne's pilot.Rarely seen, it has fallen into myth. But now, for some reason...The Dragoness's guymelef flies once more...





	1. The Dragoon Armour

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Vision Of Escaflowne is copyright Shoji Kawamori and Bandai Namco Studios, and is used without permission. Elements exclusive to this adaptation, including the Dragoon and Drag-armor concept, and their associated elements, are not intentionally based on any concept used by Shoji Kawamori or any known fan work.
> 
> Escaflowne is one of several series by Shoji Kawamori that was seemingly foreshortened, with it’s final cour being never made, with the result being a rushed and unsatisfactory ending, in a similar vein to how, years later, Macross Delta just ‘ended’. Any inaccuracies are due to difficulties finding episodes of the series. This story is intended to be a new way to explore the Escaflowne franchise, acting as a second season, with a much more intriguing myth arc that attempts to explore the truth behind Escaflowne, the knight with a dragon’s heart…  
And what having a dragon’s heart actually might have meant in the first place…
> 
> I will admit that, for lack of a better design, basing the Dragoon’s ‘casual’ look on Arle Nadja’s clothing, mainly the way her bracer also acts as simple chest armour, and the general design of it.
> 
> This chapter will move between Gaea and Earth.

There were many horrific legends attached to the existence of the ancient Guymelef Escaflowne, some proven, like the almost ritualistic murder of a dragon to prove your worthiness to pilot it, to the almost empathic nature of damage to it. However, right now, Vaan wished that one of the legends was, and at the same time, wasn’t true.

The legend of the Dragoness, an effectively nameless feminine Guymelef, the ‘Dragoness’ name more a way to classify it than the name itself, it’s pilot being a gentle, kind and selfless maiden, who, as a form of peace offering, was as much a dragon as her guymelef. The part that worried Vaan was a vague passage that spoke of her giving her heart so none would die for her.

Thankfully, for many centuries, it was just that, a legend, there being no evidence of the Dragoness or the Guymelef that she was meant to have piloted, there only being what was assumed for many years to be nothing more than a statue, of a blue and white ice dragon, which was claimed to be the path of finding the Dragoness.

However, That would have been all, if it hadn’t had been for Merle poking round with the statue one day, only to find out that the statue was anything but, and the legend was much more horrifically true than he had first thought...

  
  
It had started when he was looking through some of the paperwork he’d inherited as the king of Fanelia, and he heard a horrific scream he recognised as Merle, chilling him to the bone. When he arrived in the infirmary, Merle was laid out on one of the beds, face down, a healer dealing with two horrific gashes in her back. When he approached to look at her injuries, she seemed to channel a small amount of her feline ancestry, hissing at him before beckoning to where the castle blacksmith was studying an unfamiliar set of blue and white armour, something about it ringing alarm bells.

"You know that statue that sat in the courtyard, the really old one?” Merle stated, “I was messing with it, found a switch that turned it into that… I put it on, and, well, it reminded me that the armour was designed in the time of the Draconians...”

Once the healer had cleaned up the wounds, and a spell had numbed most of the pain, the nature of the wounds, almost peeling the skin off her back, had told him part of it, and when the blacksmith opened up the back of the armour, he knew the rest. There had been a mechanism in the back of the suit, that was engaged by the act of putting it on, that caught on the edges of the almost omnipresent scars on the back of a Draconian, caused by their wings manifesting, due to how the wings of the armour worked with the wearer's natural wings.

However, that also meant that the moment someone who didn't manifest wings almost constantly would get the equivalent of a pair of sharp cleavers ripping their back open. If Merle hadn't got to the infirmary in time, she'd have joined likely many previous people who had stolen the armour and tried to use it, only to end up found dead.

However, as he studied it with the blacksmith, something even more surreal came up. The statue had been fairly heavy, needing two or three strong men to move it when it needed moving, but, when they studied it dismantled, it was fairly light, with most of the reasons for it’s weight being seemingly hidden. If you were to fight in it, it would be easy to move in and the wearer would be surprisingly fast.

Finding a mechanism caused the back to unfold, well hidden mechanisms causing a pair of wide wings to deploy. The even more odd one was a runic array they found that caused the armour to shimmer, transforming into an even lighter blue and white outfit with a bracer wrapped across the chest. Further testing would be needed.  
  


A few hours later, Vaan looked at the golem they’d summoned, the mechanisms working, the same mechanism that caused the wings to deploy causing a draconic helm to fold over the head as a tail unfurled from the base of the spine.

“Literally, the majority of the functionality seems to be hidden by arcane methods, only appearing when the wearer needs them...” Vaan mused, the right set of adjustments to the simple controls causing it to turn into the dragon statue, but the golem broke down due to a disagreement with the same arcane methods and it’s integrity.

The next golem was given the ability to use a simple version of wings, the wings beginning to deploy as a second mechanism pulled the golem’s heart out, where it was trapped in the chest of the armor, Vaan resisting the urge to throw up as he realised it was a second test of the bearer.

"What did the legend say about her heart?" He asked one of the researchers who had been scribbling notes since they started these experiments.

"It said that she gave her own heart, so none would die for her… Oh god..." The researcher stated, before going to a nearby bucket and throwing up.

"Someone get me a drag-energist, and place it in the chest cavity of the next golem..." Vaan ordered.

With the next golem, when the mechanisms stopped, the armour began to move on it's own accord, the glow of the drag-energist within the chest plate telling them it was drawing power from it. They'd finally awoken the Dragoness.

“My Lord Fanelia, the one who tamed Escaflowne… I await the one who has my true heart… A heart given freely,” It stated, in a distorted voice that sounded slightly familiar, “To the bearer of it, we will be as one, both a dragon and a knight..."

The armour then paused, tapping it’s chin, as if thinking about something. “While you still bore the pain and suffering for your steed, Ever wonder if there is a reason that, for many generations, you have slain a dragon to awaken it?” 

It then pointed to the bracer on it’s own chest, glowing with the energy of the drag-energist protected within it, before pointing to Vaan. “You never knew of that you could become a dragoon...”

It then stopped, no longer drawing power from the glowing gem, but they now knew much more than they did when they started. Vaan looked towards the blacksmith.

“Aye, there was meant to be an armour suit fer Escaflowne,” He mused, “Hell, consider how exposed you are literally riding yer Guymelef. It was lost before my time...”

“So, the wearer was knocked off Escaflowne and the armour lost?” Vaan guessed.

“And the legend of the Dragoons was considered inaccurate as a result,” The blacksmith admitted, “Never found the matching Guymelef for the suit Merle used, but the Dragoon Armour… Until the person wearing it was killed while in dragon form, it was used in much the same way as I presume that suit was meant to be…”

“Disengage from Escaflowne, shift into dragon form, and both rider and Guymelef are one and the same. Possibly the two Dragoons could ride each other’s Guymelef at a pinch...” Vaan stated, “Did you know it needed to take the wearer’s heart?”

“Only knew about that part when you activated the Dragoon… Hell, we still called it the Dragoness till today,” The blacksmith stated, “No-one ever saw the energist chamber in the chestplate...”

He pointed to the fact that there was no sign of the energist chamber, the armour visibly unbroken, Vaan nodding. It’s why modern legends of Escaflowne turned somewhat barbaric. This piece of lore was lost completely.

“So, literally, many parts of the legend remained unverifiable, and it passed into myth...” He mused, “Where was Escaflowne was shot down by it’s Dragoon being effectively killed?”

After that, Thoughts moved to what parts of the legend they could verify now, and the female Dragoon’s identity was left unexplored. Van didn’t know why, but he regretted that Hitomi wouldn’t be the one wearing that armour. She was no draconian, and she definitely didn’t have a drag-energist for a heart…

Even if she very much fit the bill for the rest of the legend, being a pacifist who would indeed be kind, gentle and pure-hearted. Troops were sent out to check the remote area that Escaflowne crashed when it had a true ‘dragon rider’

At the same time, on Earth, Hitomi had been having problems for several weeks. She rolled her arm, her teacher sighing as she realised what was happening. Her back pain was getting too much for her again. It was getting expensive in going for constant massage sessions with no real results.

“Shoulders acting up still?” The teacher asked, and she nodded, sighing.

Randomly, at first, ever since she’d left Gaea, she’d been getting phantom pains in her back and shoulders, an annoying pain that seemed to never want to stop for very long. As a result, she’d started to wear open backed tops, which mitigated the symptoms, partially since anything rubbing against her back during a flare up, which happened all too often, just made it worse.

The school nurse had studied it, as well as a specialist who she’d called in, only to tell her that her shoulder blades and back were unnaturally tender, and to keep in touch, in case it got any worse. As a result, embarrassingly, she ended up with the specialist on speed dial, since it never really got better.

Her school blazer also spent most of the day unworn because of the fact she couldn’t use it for more than a few minutes in the day before she was wincing from the prickling sensations, the specialist having signed an exemption form, the same reason being why she used a stool instead of a chair, since she couldn’t lean back. Her only time of peace was when she was sleeping, since the pain died down to bearable levels, but she doubted that would last.

However, the worst problem was that a few boys had come to not mind seeing one of the girls at the school wearing open backed tops, and had started flirting with her or watching her go past. She’d contemplated martial arts lessons to deal with it. That was until the incident.

A young man had touched her on her back once, presumably to drape his arm over it, and she’d hissed in pain and she’d smashed him in the face with her hand. What she’d not expected was a hospital bill for the fact that, rather than breaking his nose like she’d expected, she’d actually came close to damaging his eyes, and he’d almost been blinded.

The specialist had pointed out that she had very bad mood swings when her back was touched, which was why they didn’t press charges, as well as the fact that Hitomi’s nails weren’t even long or sharpened. She should have hurt his nose, sure, but the rest defied logic, since she didn’t have the strength.

So it had ended up with her paying some of the hospital bills, as a way to keep the courts happy, and the case was dropped. The only good thing was that her stalkers learned not to wrap their arms around her when flirting with her, since she had a very twitchy temper when her back flared up.

And it had got round the school that her back was almost perpetually sore. So, they could talk to her, but most of the usual seduction methods involved an arm draped over the shoulders or back, and that caused her pain, which would cause them a lot more pain...

So her dating prospects were worse than nil.  
  


In the present, One of the worst places for her to get flare ups was the sports field, the pain getting worst when she passed by the spot where the portal to Gaea had opened. For that reason, she had stopped doing any sports, since most of them had long periods on that end of the field, and she never did any favours which passed through that part of the school grounds.

“Thank god it stops when I’m not at school...” She’d said to the specialist, “I’d suggest that it was likely something in that spot that was causing the pain, but I don’t know how I’d put it...”  
She dusted off her fingers after finishing the picture she’d been sketching. It was of a Guymelef she’d been dreaming of, Hitomi able to tell it was one since it was seemingly derived from Escaflowne. The picture she’d drawn was of what she thought the dragon mode would look like, a slimmer, sleeker version of Escaflowne.

What she’d been sketching that day was since she’d, in a burst of inspiration, given the rider armour, which pretty much resembled a dragon, completely unaware that she'd almost perfectly replicated the feminine version of the Dragoon.

“Riding something like that without protection...” She mused, looking at the finished picture, she felt something was missing, and found herself adding a energist chamber, replacing part of the chest armour, as part of the breast plate gained a glowing panel, and the similarity to the Dragoon became uncanny. Within tolerances, she'd just drawn both the armour and Guymelef of the Dragoon.

Another page of her sketchbook had her drawing the rider this time, as new inspiration took hold. She then put her sketchbook away, and went back to classes, deciding she’d figure out what was going on with these thoughts later. She barely noticed that, with a few adjustments, the rider strongly resembled herself…


	2. Growing Pains

Vaan sighed. So far he’d not managed to come across any new information, and his heart felt heavy in his chest as he contemplated his failure. There had been no major conflicts since he’d last deployed Escaflowne. As he boarded it, however, he found the controls not responding. He checked the energist chamber, to find the crystallised dragon heart had developed several large cracks in it.

“What the?” He grumbled. The chamber itself wasn’t damaged, it just was effectively decrystallising. He ejected the crystal, wincing at the fluids that leaked from the broken stone, as it decomposed.

“Lord...” One of the attendants stated, before, as they noticed what was happening, “Oh dear. We’ll have it moved to a secure bay...”

Over the following days, He heard the unrest in the troops as he landed in a regular guymelef, effectively stripped of his mark of office.

“Where is Escaflowne?” Several asked, for Vaan to parrot out a standardised response that it had developed a fault, and it risked his health to aggravate damage to something that had a symbiotic link to it’s pilot at times, the loyal troops accepting the white lie.  
However, he could tell control was slipping from Fanelia, since spies would report his personal guymelef, and a major game-changer on the battlefield, was gone. He suddenly felt a need for Hitomi to be there. She could predict how this unrest would spread, and interpret the portents the discovery of the Dragoness...  
That was the only reason he needed her,_ not_ to see if she was the Dragoness herself. Honest. He scratched at his chest absent-mindedly. This was not the best time to be second-guessing himself...

Back on Earth, Hitomi sighed as she crossed through a certain part of school property. The pain from her unusual back injury was so much worse when she walked too close to the location where the portal to Gaea had appeared. The problem was that she had to cross through the area for classes. Damn whoever changed the room number.

Her back wasn’t just hurting as she moved close to the location, it was like it was trying to tear itself open. She steadied herself on the fence as the pain increased. As she passed closer to the spot, she noticed her back was bleeding, her back red raw with pain. It wasn’t just trying to tear itself open, it had done.

However, she had to move through that area. As she came as close as she dared, she heard an inhuman screeching cry, blacking out as white-hot pain cut through her body and mind. When someone came to investigate, they found the area covered in a snow white carpet of feathers, a large patch of them drenched in blood.

The only thing that was able to be confirmed was that the blood was Hitomi’s, and she was presumed dead. What confused them though was when they did a DNA analysis of the blood and feathers… and found only Hitomi’s DNA, with no sign of any DNA for whatever shed the feathers...

Within Gaea, Vaan looked up as he saw a familiar shimmering effect, before a bloody figure collapsed in the middle of courtyard. He was galvanised into action when he noticed that the figure was Hitomi, having been pulled to Gaea by some unexpected incident.

“Someone get a doctor!” He snapped, carrying her carefully. The doctor studied her semi-conscious body, checking for reactions as he prodded and poked. But she found no problems, and Hitomi was soon sleeping in one of the recovery beds, Merle taking up position to greet her.

When she woke up, she looked confused, slightly surprised to see Merle, her confusion passing quickly. Whatever had happened, she’d been pulled into Gaea.

“Vaan found you passed out in the courtyard,” She offered, “Most of your outfit was covered in blood, the doctor thought it started on your back, but there was nothing there they could find...”

“Umm… Well… Huh?” Hitomi began, rolling her arms, “That’s odd,”

“What do you mean?” Merle asked, having seen Vaan doing the same thing a couple of times.

“What’s up?” Merle asked, curious, “Beastkin got your tongue?”

“It’s nothing. Never expected the portal to reopen...” Hitomi muttered, for Vaan to arrive in the doorway.

“That’s something even more odd… You shouldn’t be here, the requirements for the portal to open… They’ve not occurred again yet...”

“So, There’s some reason other than that I came here...” Hitomi mused, “Has anything changed?”

Vaan paused in his answer to Hitomi. He knew of one thing, Escaflowne’s bride, The Dragoon, but he wasn’t exactly going to chance Hitomi’s back with those wicked scythes, or the fact it ripped someone’s heart out, especially with what the doctor had said. Right now, it was an execution tool rather than armour. He needed more information.

“No, Nothing has changed,” Vaan lied, “What was with the fact you were wearing a top with no back on it?”

“Fashion statement...” Hitomi responded slightly quickly, Vaan now curious. Hitomi didn’t even notice Vaan pick up her school bag, with her copy of a very important medical form in it, purely due to how much she needed to refer to it...

“She’s lying.” He stated to Merle, “This is our best chance to get some information...”

A few hours later, Vaan was sat with a translation key for ‘Japanese’, and the papers from Hitomi’s bag. Most of them had already been discounted.

“So, What do you think it was?” Merle asked, “The blood was all hers, the doctor could tell me that.”

“And something about the way the blood pooled seemed familiar...” Vaan mused, taking one of the sheets and double-checking what he’d found, “Iryou Menjo-sho… Let’s see… Yes, This is the right item… Sore back and sho… Merle, You agree her back was perfectly fine?”

“That’s what the doctor said, completely fine, not even sore...” Merle almost dictated, “Why?”

“Hitomi got an exemption from wearing her ‘school blazer’, probably that jacket she had on when she first arrived back then, and anything with a back on it, due to having constant tenderness in her shoulders and back… tenderness that has completely gone after something ruptured, if I’m right, her back!” Vaan stated, “She had her back tear itself open, and heal back up!”

“You just want her...” Merle offered, for him to hand her the translation key and form, and she found the part he’d translated, checking it herself, “OK, You’re right… But we can’t really trust that this is due to a similar injury to when your wings show, since her back healed up, and someone growing wings isn’t exactly discreet. Where the hell are all the feathers?”

Vaan paused. That was a good point. She’d been in a pool of blood, but there weren’t bloody feathers there. Instead, there was blood pooled in a similar way. Plus, even then, she didn’t have a ‘dragon’s heart’...

Meanwhile, In the hospital room, Hitomi sighed. She was having problems sleeping, hearing something calling to her. She headed out of her room, walking into a room which was clearly a treasury of some kind, finding a set of cloth armour folded on a plinth. She slipped it on, adjusting the bracer, finding it seemed similar to what she’d been drawing.

As she began to leave, however, she felt the pain returning, but now it was also in her chest, Hitomi looking to see the central orb was now a blood red, and she realised the inside of the bracer was making a very worrying regular pulsing motion.

‘_Do not touch, __Do not remove the bracer, or you will cut the connection__...’_ A firm voice stated, the blood draining out of it as it closed up, the pain having passed, ‘_Just think what you need, and it shall be..._’

A short time later, she was dressed in something close to sleepwear, and had gone back to bed, the bracer’s presence seemingly cloaked by the style of the top.

“What do you mean ‘It’s been stolen’?!” Vaan snapped, as they entered the treasury, to find the plinth where the Dragoon Armour should have been, to find the space empty, “It weighs a ton!”

“Good morning, Vaan!” Hitomi stated, wearing a pretty blue and white outfit, a amulet of some kind hanging from her neck, “What’s wrong?”

“An ancient artifact was stolen last night...” Vaan offered, looking towards her, “Nice outfit. Suits you better than constantly wearing your school uniform...”

“Been wearing open backed tops for so long, I’m glad to wear something that has one for a change...” Hitomi offered in response, “So, I’m assuming that part of why I’m here is linked to this artifact...”

“It’s the armour of the Dragoness,” Merle stated, “Not likely anything to do with you, unless you want to ruin your back again...”

“How do you know about my back?!” Hitomi snapped, “I didn’t say anything about it...”

“I figured you were lying about the ‘fashion statement’,” Vaan stated, “We found medical texts that talked of how your back was giving you trouble. Whatever hurt you also fixed your injury… And anyway, It needs a very special form of Energist to use...”

“I’ll forgive you for looking through my things this once… Still, Special how?” Hitomi asked. Vaan considered how his heart had felt literally heavy, wincing as he cut open his chest, finding the offending change to his own biology, and pulling it out.

“So, rather than a dragon’s heart, it needs a _dragoon’s_ heart...” Hitomi offered, going to a nearby bucket and throwing up the meal she’d had earlier, “Sorry, but...”

Vaan and Merle nodded, Hitomi walking off. She was clearly uncomfortable with something like that.

Once she was out of sight, she found a switch on the side of the amulet, and an identical gem to the one Vaan had taken out. Her new clothes were the armour of the Dragoness, and that was _her_ heart.

“_Your injuries were your physiology changing to suit what I needed of you..._” The voice stated, “_I apologize for it.”_

“_Can you remove the bracer, and put my… umm… heart back in me?”_ Hitomi thought back to the voice, for her to wince as the bracer vanished, and she felt a heavy feeling in her chest.

“_You will need to manifest the bracer to use your heart with Escaflowne or myself..._” The voice offered, Hitomi thinking for a moment.

“_I will do that, Seiryu,_” Hitomi offered, there being a brief pause.

“_Seiryu?”_ The voice asked.

“_Blue is a major part of my new outfit, and the Eastern Deity of my home’s religion is also called Seiryu...”_ Hitomi asked.

“_A fine name. Yes, Hitomi of Japan, for you, I will be Seiryu..._” The voice stated, “_I will need you to do something. Stop lying to your mate...”_

“This is interesting. The Dragoness’s guymelef has many names, due to how it slept until summoned, and each princess named it differently,” Merle stated, “By using the basic description from what the armour looked like, I’ve found over a dozen different guymelefs that were all identical in design, all having female pilots...”

“So, that’s why we never found anything before now...” He mused, “Effectively, we were expecting it to have a consistent name, but only the male line has remained unbroken...”

“Tried using your new paperweight in Escaflowne?” Merle asked, Vaan’s injury from removing his own heart having healed, the energist sat on his desk, Merle grabbing it and heading out of the room, to hear Vaan cry out in pain, running back in.

“I think I know why this didn’t catch on...” Vaan offered, taking it back, “It’s still my heart, and if I lost it...”

Merle winced. “You can’t exactly replace your own heart...”

Hitomi walked in, looking over one of the lists, before taking out a pen, and writing something down, before walking off.

“What did she write down?” Merle hissed.

“Didn’t know she knew Gaean script...” Vaan mused, “The word’s unfamiliar… Hmm… Sei-Ryu… OK...”

He got out the Japanese guide he’d been using earlier. “Sei-Ryu is a divine entity from her world, it means Azure Dragon...”

“The list is the names I’ve found so far for the Dragoness’s guymelef,” Merle stated, “A vast majority of them have similar form to the name she... put... down...”

Both of them ran from the room as they realised _what_ she’d just added to the list they’d been consulting… _Her_ name for the Dragoness.

“Hitomi, why did you put that name on that list?” Vaan asked, for Hitomi to sigh, wincing as she took off the amulet she’d been wearing earlier, for it to snap open, showing an identical energist to the one Vaan had.

“OK, Seiryu, put it back in,” Hitomi stated, putting the amulet back on, for it to disappear, “It gets less painful the more often I do that… Ah, right...”

“Who are you talking to?” Merle asked, for Hitomi’s entire outfit to shift, as she cried out, the scream turning into a roar, as the familiar armour manifested, complete with the wings.

“**I think that you already know the answer...**” A dual-voice stated, part Hitomi, part someone else, the head armour folding back, “And now you’ve put my back out again! I don’t care that this is how you’re meant to manifest, It still hurt!”

The wings folded back in, Hitomi wincing as she shifted back, staggering.

Less than an hour later, she was back in the hospital, her energist in her schoolbag, a concession she managed to make with Seiryu.

“Your body is capable of surviving the transition, but the injuries you were suffering from back on Earth are back...” The doctor explained, “Please tell... Seiryu that you can’t do that again until your back heals...”

“There’s no scars, but...” Merle stated, yelping as Hitomi lashed out at her when she touched her back, “Clearly, Seiryu’s gifts are not good for your health at the moment. And don’t worry. I almost maimed Vaan when I borrowed your armour,”

“So, you do know, that by merging with Seiryu...” Vaan asked.

“She outright called you my mate...” Hitomi stated, “Now, Seiryu, you know the outfit I was in earlier?… Including the open back… No, it has to be those colours...”

Hitomi pulled on the replica of her school uniform, taking out her energist, before she vanished.

“Well, that explains how she arrived...” Vaan mused, noticing a message where she’d been, “Oh, and she’ll be back when she feels better,”

“What exactly happened to you? We declared you dead!” Her mother stated, looking sheepish as Hitomi reminded her of her sore back.

“Something similar to what happened _last_ time I went missing abruptly...” Hitomi offered, “And you know how well that went...”

Her mother looked sheepish at the reminder of the mild panic her _last_ visit to Gaea caused, and the subject was dropped, Hitomi heading upstairs.

“_You did very well in capturing my design, Lady Kanzaki..._” Seiryu said in her head as she looked over the sketches she’d been doing, “_And yes, the reason for the mode I forced on you is for your protection...”_

“Does it have to cause back problems?” Hitomi asked, to find herself sketching an image of the armour forcing her wings to manifest, catching them in armoured ‘dragon’ wings, and she realised she just wasn’t used to the sudden severe action.

“_Otherwise, your wings would not open out into the proper locations..._” Seiryu replied almost petulantly. Hitomi sighed, putting her heart back where it belonged. She didn’t like the idea that she could externalise her heart now, the same enchantment that made it into one meaning that a doctor would find the right organ if they looked.

The one thing useful about finding Seiryu was that the pain didn’t flare up the same way when she walked through the track area, since the reason it had was Seiryu trying to manifest her powers. Now they _were_ manifested, she just had persistent back pain until she got used to her wings.

“This…_ School is interesting. Being an ancient dragon spirit, I never really did education..._” Seiryu offered in her head, “_I need you to do something for me..._”

Hitomi picked up a spare uniform, as she removed the armour, leaving her heart in it as directed, watching as it shifted into the form of a girl with a ponytail, that closely resembled her, wearing her ‘own’ school uniform.

“In this form, I can be within a space roughly the size of this school...” Seiryu offered, “If I move too far away, I would be compelled to return to your side, since I’d kill you if I was to move much further...”

“Great to know...” Hitomi said with a crooked grin. She later found that her new ‘sister’ spent the entire rest of the school day in it’s library, and was soon back wearing the armour of Seiryu as she headed home.

“_Rather a lot of your culture seems to be borrowed from a place named China._” Seiryu observed, “_When in that form in the future, please refer to me as Seiko. The other students seem to think I am your sister as well. And I may have maimed a boy..._”

Hitomi got a flash of memory and sighed. It was the same boy _she’d_ maimed with what was likely part of her new abilities manifesting.

“_Oh dear._” Seiryu offered, “_He has no luck. __Apparently, Kanzaki dragonesses seem to like breaking his nose,_”

Hitomi found herself not wanting to correct Seiryu on that she was not a Kanzaki. Partially since, in a way, she was born from the same blood.

**Author's Note:**

> I will state, for the record, that the archive warning is more about the setting, and some of the references to how the dragoon armour works with Van and Hitomi. There will be battles, and people will get hurt in nasty ways, and transforming into a dragon is not the most painless thing to do for an actual person.  
The Dragoon's Heart works similar to a Drag-Energist, but is outright designed to be removed and reinserted without killing it's owner, but if the Heart itself is stolen, they can still die from it's absence.
> 
> Also, as a mild disclaimer, the non-armour outfit is shamelessly Arle Nadja's classic outfit from Madou Monogatari without the cape.


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